Hello RainyDay,

In general, managing life can be quite difficult at times and the best way to cope with stress would be to practice self-care and/or time management skills. We all know that college work is difficult and it takes diligence to succeed, so be honest with yourself as it is the key to fully knowing what topics you truly understand and which ones need work. If you also work and are a full-time student we would recommend to take a relaxing break after work if possible because coursework does require one's full attention. One helpful tip is to finish the coursework due or any form of school related work before going to work to avoid the stress. This can be done with the extra planning on a calendar or a planner, which can easily be found on app stores now such as Notion. 

As for the OAT, it is difficult to handle studying for the OAT while being a full-time student that is taking courses that may not be tested on the exam. Therefore, it is recommended to study for the OAT during the summer at a consistent pace with a study plan. A study plan could consist of daily study tasks for the month frame you will be studying for. To shortly say, we would suggest figuring out your study plan such as how many months you have until your test and divide the topics and practices based on the number days you have to study. Also, add a day for self-care where you won't study heavily and study plans can actually be found online. We also suggest buying study material such as the Kaplan OAT book study bundle and use our member exclusive OAT resource sheet that consist of several free study resources that we found online. The more practice, the more exposure and comfortable/confident you'll be. 
After all, you know yourself the best and we truly believe that you'll do wonderful things in life :) .

Best of luck, 

​U See Eyes

Dear Flowers,

For the OAT, A basic on-screen calculator is provided for the Quantitative Reasoning section. A useful that we have is to to memorize and know the conversions such as 1kg= 1000g to save time when you take the exam.  We suggest to do more practice problems and find patterns in questions to be able to manage your time throughout the exam. Best of luck Flowers! You can do it :).

Wishing you well, 

U See Eyes 

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For those that took OAT, about how much evolutionary bio (taxonomy, cladograms, etc.) questions were there? Is it that important to study each animal group like in Bio 94?

- Bear123

Dear Plumeria, 

Wonderful question. When asking for a letter of recommendation, you should first make sure that the doctor or the person you are asking knows you well. We understand that it can be difficult to make time to talk to a doctor or professor, and they know this too so the best way would be to send them an email or schedule an appointment. For an optometrists, if you set up an exam to get their eyes checked, that gives you the perfect one on one time with the doctor without interfering with their busy work schedule. They should have a general sense of your work ethic as well as your personality. From that, you can also  buy them a cup of coffee and briefly talk to them about why you want to be an optometrist. This will give them a few ideas on what to write. Don't forget that you want a great letter! Once, they have written you a letter recommendation you should give them a gift card or email them a thank you notice. We hope that his helps :).

Cheers, 

U See Eyes